A bit of a grab-bag entry (er ... as though that's anything
unusual) as I try to get ready for
Pennsic.
Baitcon: I mentioned that there were lots of folks
I was glad to see, and that the "folks I don't see often enough" category
is too large. There were too many members of that category present for
me to get to talk to everyone I wanted to. I'm glad of the chance to
catch up with the ones I did manage to. I really need to plan a road trip
to Boston (and several other places) once I have a car again.
On the whole I had a great time -- meteorological, culinary,
musical, and social aspects were all wonderful -- and my body
only "stole time" from me by forcing me to rest-more-than-healthy-people
when I would rather have been making music or being social, rather than
wiping out my weekend entirely. It was frustrating but I'm trying to
recalibrate my expectations. (Much like the past couple years
at Pennsic where I've had to pace myself in such a way that I
get about a week worth of Pennsic in the two weeks spent
there. Getting more folks to come hang out in my camp would
help summat.)
After Baitcon: my right wrist has been
excruciatingly painful since sometime on the way home from
Baitcon. :-( Enough so that perhaps it's just as well that
miscommunication interfered with my getting to
3LF
rehearsal this week. I did find a position in which I can
play bass guitar without aggravating it farther, but I'm not
sure I can play double bass right now, and really vigorous
strumming on guitar (like I do in
HCB) would be
a major problem. I've no idea what I did to it, and am
feeling rather impatient about its healing, since I'm
concerned about being able to play when it's time to perform.
Pennsic whoops: The somewhat Rube Goldberg
shipping arrangements for a package I need from London, Ontario
fell through. (The "fault", if one can be said to exist, lies
more with the fragility of a plan involving so many steps, rather
than the failure of any one person trying to do me a favour;
also, my own lack of foresight in getting things moving early
enough to compensate for glitches.) This has the potential to
make my Pennsic significantly uncomfortable. I don't suppose
there's anyone who could arrange to bring me two weeks worth
of certain Canadian goods on such short notice? (Specifically
the generic version of Reactine [Zyrtec] which I know
I'm going to want in that dusty, smoky environment, and
codeine+caffeine+acetaminophen tablets [unless a version with
ibuprofen instead of aceteminophen exists], which I very much
hope not to need, but am very likely to given that
Pennsic is a bit rough on my body. The Reactine has to be the
plain version, without any decongestant -- 10mg tablets
preferred, though I can double up on 5mg pills or use a
pill-splitter to chop 20mg ones in half.)
And not really a 'whoops', though I do wish I'd thought
to ask earlier than this: is there anybody in my area
(Baltimore) not going to Pennsic, who has a 12V
deep-cycle battery that I could borrow for two weeks? Merely
a convenience, as opposed to the rather more pressing medical
needs in the preceeding paragraph, but hey, if it works out ...
And a little-whoops: I'm still looking to trade a 128MB
Memory Stick Pro that I can't use (actually it's a Pro Duo
in an adapter) for a 128MB or even a 64MB Memory Stick
not-'Pro' that I can use. I meant to try
to arrange such a trade for Baitcon but forgot.
Not related to anything in particular (1):
Every so often a friend sets up, or tweaks, their custom filters
to show journal entries on different topics to different
people, and there's usually a round of "which filters do you
want to be on?". If I'm actually getting around to reading
everything and commenting that week, I usually say
something like this, which I'll borrow
emeraldliz's
words for because they're more concise than mine:
"I get tired of people deciding they suddenly need a
dozen friends lists and asking people if they want to be on them. If
I'm a friend- it's cuz I want to read your stuff. If you don't want
me to read it, that's up to you. If I don't want to read it, it's up
to me."
Note that I don't expect everyone on my friendslist who decides
a month or a year or a decade from now to remember the Published
Filter Policy of every person on their friendslist, so
therefore I am not demanding that this statement be remembered and
taken into account, but I figure I may as well at least put it
out there just in case.
Actually, if there were an
"add this user-plus-tag"
option when friending someone or adding them to one of your own reading
filters, then tags could be used to push the whole "opt-in filter"
concept into the reader's sphere-of-control. (Even better would be
that plus "except if this tag is present" as options, so that I
could exclude certain only-occasionally-interesting and usually
verbose subjects fom my "busy" reading filter, while still leaving
them on my default view. It would have to be user+tag, not just
tag-regardless-of-user, because different people use the same tag
different ways.) As I've observed before, I'm sure there are folks
who would like to be able to subscribe to my
QotD entries
without getting the rest of my journal.
Not related to anything in particular (2):
I was thinking last week about what's nice about being in a place
where lots of guys are wearing kilts, and was reminded of it
at Baitcon when somebody made an appreciative comment about
men in skirts (kilts and otherwise): It's been quite adequately
demonstrated that a large percentage of women really like seeing
men in kilts or in skirted garments in general. Not all of these
women will be attracted to me, but in an environment
where there are lots of kilts being worn, the odds are that for
each woman present, there will be at least one guy she
finds distractingly attractive wearing a kilt within visual range.
So women at such events tend to be, if not exactly aroused
per se, at least a little ... "revved up", "sparkly",
happy, tittilated. And even when they're not looking at
me, that energy is perceptible, and I find that energy,
that undercurrent of
awareness-of-aroused-females-of-my-species pervading the
environment, to be pleasurable in itself. I like being around
aroused women. It feels nice. A pleasant glow for an
empath.
Really, I've never quite understood why so relatively few
cisgendered American guys (outside of the Pagan community,
Celtic festivals, medieval reenactment contexts, and the contradance
scene) choose to wear
unbifurcated garments, given how positively -- and usually
quite openly so -- many women respond when they see men wearing
such things. (Admittedly, I first noticed the connection as a
side effect of being transgendered, but I eventually would've
caught on from being at medieval events and Scottish events,
and would have realized as several of my friends and acquaintances
appear to have, that kilts tend to please the ladies.)